In-Home Visits Help Reduce Drug Use And Depression In Pregnant Teens

Recent findings published in the American Journal of Psychiatry show that intensive parenting and health education provided in the homes of pregnant American Indian teens helped to reduce illegal drug use among mothers, along with depression and behavioral problems, overall.

Furthermore, findings revealed that it also helped to put children on a path towards a better future. By providing health educators who were more formally educated to counsel young at-risk mothers, health officials helped provide many young parents with finding permanent jobs in impoverished communities.

"For years in public health we have been working on immunizations and other medical interventions to set the course for the health of disadvantaged children, and we have turned the tide," said lead study author Allison Barlow, MPH, PhD, associate director of the Center for American Indian Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a news release. "Now the burden is in multi-generational behavioral health problems, the substance abuse, depression and domestic violence that are transferred from parents to children. This intervention can help us break that cycle of despair."

Furthermore, the findings also suggest that employing local community health educators instead of more formally educated nurses to counsel those at risk could help provide badly need jobs to high school graduates from the same impoverished areas.

The study was conducted in four American Indian communities in Southwest, but according to researchers, its success could likely be replicated in other low-income populations around the United States.